Two still-life paintings that feature The Cincinnati Enquirer have been hanging in The Enquirer offices a long time.

The oldest is “Gone West,” painted in 1879 by Cincinnati artist Joseph Henry Sharp, who is most known for his portraits of Native Americans.

No information could be found about how the painting came to be in The Enquirer’s possession, though a nameplate on the frame includes the dates of Sharp’s life (1859-1953), suggesting it was a later acquisition.

The still life shows items associated with heading out West — pocket knife, pipe, pistol, nature guide — and a folded-up Enquirer from May 17, 1879, with the headline “Gone West.” (The story actually tells about John West of Missouri being hanged for murder.)

Sharp himself went west eventually, and decided to make painting Native Americans his life’s work.

Painter Joseph Henry Sharp.

Painter Joseph Henry Sharp.

Provided

Born in Bridgeport, Ohio, Sharp nearly drowned as a child, and the incident damaged his hearing. He gradually became deaf, which made regular schooling difficult.

At age 14, he enrolled in the School of Design, the forerunner of the Art Academy of Cincinnati, then studied in Europe at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts and the Académie Julien. He returned to the School of Design in 1885, and taught drawing and painting at the Art Academy from 1893 to 1902.

Infatuated with the natives of Taos, New Mexico, Sharp moved out there permanently in 1912, and helped found the Taos Society of Artists. He finally closed his Taos studio when he was 93. Of his more than 10,000 works, most were Native American pieces that chronicled their changing way of life.

"The Usurper" by C.A. Meurer was bought by Enquirer owner John R. McLean in 1890.

"The Usurper" by C.A. Meurer was bought by Enquirer owner John R. McLean in 1890.

The Enquirer/Jeff Suess

The second Enquirer still life, “The Usurper” by Charles Meurer (signed C.A. Meurer), depicts a pug wearing spectacles and smoking a pipe, having taken over the offices of Enquirer owner John R. McLean and burned a hole in the Feb. 27, 1890, edition.

“There was a touch of nature and waggishness about the work that won it much praise,” The Enquirer wrote of Meurer’s “charming picture.” McLean purchased the painting from the artist in May 1890.

Meurer was born in Germany to American parents in 1865. Like Sharp, he also attended the School of Design in Cincinnati, and studied under painters Thomas Satterwhite Noble, Lewis Henry Meakin and Frank Duveneck.

Meurer’s trompe-l’oeil still lifes (French for “deceives the eye”) are so detailed as to be mistaken for reality. His painting “My Passport,” exhibited at the 1893 World’s Fair, was confiscated by the Secret Service because its depiction of U.S. currency was deemed too close to the real thing.

“I satisfied them by painting red lines through the natural wrinkles of the bills,” Meurer told The Enquirer shortly before he died in 1955. “It didn’t harm the painting but it defaced the money enough to stop the Secret Service people from fretting. … I guess they were afraid I might cut it out and try to spend it.”

Meurer continued to paint in his studio-home in Terrace Park, even after complications from a fall led to both legs being amputated. Although known for still lifes, Meurer was commissioned to paint a portrait of Eleanor Roosevelt for the Roosevelt Memorial Library, and his good friend Duveneck called one of his rural landscapes a masterpiece.

Both Sharp and Meurer have paintings among the 67,000 works in the Cincinnati Art Museum collection, but they may be the only ones to also have works hanging at 312 Elm St. Downtown.